Dr. MacLean noted that HSS patients are discharged to home and receive quality post-discharge care. Hospital staff identify patients who may be at risk for certain complications and proactively reach out to them for progress updates. HSS also has a system to help these patients make a same-day appointment with a provider, if needed.

"The challenge, especially for specialty hospitals, particularly for the ones that are standalone and do not have primary care doctors, is for them to manage the whole episode of care. I think we have done that well," she said.

Additionally, Dr. MacLean expressed that another challenge is preparing patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) as a component of quality measurement.

"We have initiated routine collection of PROMs now on all our patients at HSS, so that is a big list to do that," added Dr. MacLean.

Read the full article at healio.com [registration required]. This also appeared in the May 2018 print issue.